


you dissolve on my tongue

by alexanger



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-18 11:48:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8161106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanger/pseuds/alexanger
Summary: We are all born with marks on our bodies. These marks show us two things - first, they show us how we die. And second, they show us just how long we have.
And John Laurens, his mark --





	1. Chapter 1

Alex’s mark is low on his chest. It sits where, if you press down with your fingers, you can feel the hollow between two of his ribs. It’s been there all his life, dark, the edges fuzzy.

“Not that bright,” John tells him, the first time they undress for each other. John’s shirt is still on and he kisses the mark, reverent, Alex’s body bared before him. They’re both half-hard, unsure, so new to each other -

“No,” Alex agrees. “I mean - I’ve seen brighter. My mom’s was like this. Maybe a little more colour in it. I’m not that worried about it.”

John’s eyebrows knit. “When did she -”

“John,” Alex says, a quiver of laughter in his voice. “Are we  _ really _ going to talk about this when you’re so close to my dick?”

“No - no. You’re right.” John kisses Alex’s mark again, runs his lips over it reverently, and his fingers find the thick muscle of thigh and creep up - but there’s hesitance in his hands.

“Are you going to take your shirt off?”

“I -” John starts, and then takes a deep breath. “Ah. Yeah. Okay.” He pulls it over his head in a quick, jerky motion, and as the hem lifts over his collarbone, Alex sucks in a breath.

“It’s -”

“Yeah,” Alex says, and then he bites his lip. “Yeah.”

It’s livid - the mark is over his heart, a bloom of red, the edges blown ragged and wide. It’s the size of a fist, the size of an orange; Alex makes a tiny noise that might be horror or grief.

“It’s - bad,” John says, and his fingers knot in Alex’s hair. “I know. But it’s not - like, I’ve seen worse -”

“Yeah,” Alex agrees, “there’s worse -”

But when he kisses John, each kiss is like a kiss goodbye; and when he pushes John back onto the bed and climbs on top of him, it’s like he’s laying him to rest.

 

* * *

 

They can’t stay apart.

In the in-between spaces, they find secret little places to crash together, lips and teeth and tongue and grasping hands. Alex looks at him like he’s something precious and rare. John almost hates it.

“I’m not dead yet,” he says every time, trying to lighten the mood, and Alex always laughs but it never reaches his eyes.

“Not yet,” Alex agrees, every time.

And every night, every night, Alex undresses him like he’s unwrapping a priceless treasure and lays kisses thick on his skin. He kisses each freckle - it feels like he kisses each freckle  _ twice  _ \- and sucks possessive bruises into the skin around the mark, and each bruise screams  _ mine mine mine. _

Sometimes when Alex’s lips touch the rose-blossom marking, pain lances through John’s chest, sudden and explosive and white-hot - but it only lasts a second, and then it’s gone, so why bring it up?

“I love you,” Alex gasps into the dark, into John’s mouth, against John’s neck. A thousand thousand declarations of love and promise and the word  _ forever _ that sounds less like a promise and more like a threat.  _ I won’t let you go, _ John hears behind the words.  _ If I hold tight enough then you can’t go. _

He doesn’t argue. There’s no arguing with Alex, but there’s also no arguing with the mark on his chest. He can feel how deep it runs. It’s not just the surface of his skin - if he were to rip it off, if he were to dig his nails in and shred, it would be there, printed on his muscle, his bones, his heart.

So he ignores it, like he’s always done, while Alex rocks on him and gasps and sobs and moans. He ignores it while Alex’s hot mouth presses on his and their fingers clench on muscle and knot in hair to yank.

He ignores it until the seize in him - the little death - and they’re silent again, together, coming down from dizzying heights.

That’s when it always comes back - the knowledge that he’s running out of time.

 

* * *

 

“We could find a way to change it,” Alex says.

John shakes his head. 

“If you’re so resigned -”

“I’m not,” is what John wants to say. “I’m terrified,” he wants to add.

Instead, he says, “let it go.”

 

* * *

 

“You have another,” says Alex, and John cranes his neck to look over his shoulder.

“Oh,” he says, “yeah. Probably means I die twice. I get to be a zombie or something.”

He’s flippant because he can’t be fearful - but he doesn’t know why there are two, why the one on his chest is so huge and the one on his back is so small.

“That’s metal as fuck,” Alex says solemnly, and he presses a kiss to the tiny circular mark on John’s back.

 

* * *

 

“Do you believe in -” Alex pauses, and John breathes into the empty minutes.

“Probably not, but go on.”

“Shut up.” Alex smacks his arm softly. “I mean - if we all have marks - do we really, you know, choose anything in our lives? If we can’t choose when they end -”

“I could choose right now,” John says. “It’s not impossible.”

“So do it,” Alex challenges, and John contemplates, for a moment, cutting himself off before his mark can do it. He contemplates ending things.

But he doesn’t know how - he doesn’t know when - he only knows it’s soon, soon, and he’s hungry for every minute. He takes a breath, lets it out, takes another, and he knows that his lungs will greedily suck in air until they are  _ forced  _ to stop. The tenacious beating of his heart refuses to shudder to a halt.

“I can’t,” John says. “I’m not ready.”

“I don’t think you can ever be ready,” Alex says, but there’s a quaver in his voice that makes it sound like a lie.

“Would you run?” John asks. “If you knew? Do you think you’ll know when you’re facing it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Alex says.

“I don’t think I’d run,” John tells him.

Alex looks at him hard, and then closes his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Each time is like the last time; Alex savours the way John tastes, sucks languidly, takes his time swallowing.

“You really like that, huh?” John says into the thick silence after.

“No,” Alex says. “Only with you. It’s -”

But what it is, he doesn’t say. At least not right away. They breathe together, in and out, like they’re sucking each other into their lungs to hold, and Alex coughs and his chest swells and he says, “it’s - it’s bad, probably. It’ll sound weird. But I - as a rule, I spit, I don’t like -”

“Yeah?”

“The taste. Or the feel. But with you it’s - it’s different -”

“Tell me, Alex.”

“You’ll laugh,” says Alex. “Or you’ll be creeped out.”

“We’ve been together, like, a year, I know  _ exactly _ how weird you are - you can’t shock me,” John says.

Alex hums. “It’s like -” He falters, and then starts again. “I want to be able to - keep you here -”

John touches his mark, softly whispers, “please, not tonight -”

But Alex has started and there’s no stopping him when the words are there. He laughs sharply and says, “so you’re - you’re in me, and I can’t - it’s not like I’d like it if it wasn’t you, but it  _ is  _ you and it’s part, you know, I want to give you good moments, and part, like, nothing is gonna take this away. This is mine. I -”

“I get it,” John says, trying to cut him off, but Alex plows ahead.

“- like there’s this. There’s this author, I don’t know his name, but he writes kid’s books, and one time a kid sent him a letter, and then he sent back a drawing. An original drawing! From this super famous author! And the kid ate it. He liked it so much he ate it. That was like, the ultimate expression of love -”

“So you’re a cannibal now?” John tries to joke, but Alex looks at him with huge eyes, full of all-consuming hunger, and the laughter dies in his throat.

“I’m not ready to let you go,” Alex says. “So I need to have this, at least.”

 

* * *

 

And John thinks about that now, every time. He watches the way Alex’s Adam’s apple bobs and thinks about that peculiar French euphemism for orgasm, and he holds his hand tight over his heart, over his mark, as though if he presses hard enough, his palm will just rub it away.

 

* * *

 

“Do you think anything we do affects it?” John asks.

Alex hums. “I heard this story once,” he says, “about a guy who, you know, he had a mark that was pretty faded, and then he started smoking and it got brighter -”

“Okay, but that’s definitely a myth, I learned about it in one of my bio classes - everyone hears that, but it didn’t happen,” John says. “I mean, like - do you think it’s always gonna be the same thing that happens? Like if it’s a heart attack, is it  _ always _ gonna be a heart attack? Or can you, like, get stabbed there instead …” He trails off, and Alex frowns.

“I don’t understand.”

John touches the spot on Alex’s ribs; he doesn’t need to see it to know exactly where it is. “Like, maybe this is a blood clot,” John says. “Or liver failure. Or a punctured lung - you’d have to get a certain angle - not important. So it could be a bunch of different things. And what I mean is, when you’re born, does your body just - know? Does anything change that? Maybe you’re born and it’s supposed to be liver failure, but then someone stabs you and it’s a punctured lung instead.”

“Ah,” says Alex, noncommittal, vague.

“You asked me once if I believe in - I guess it was free will. If I think we can choose anything in our lives,” John tells him.

“And do you?” Alex asks.

“I don’t know -” John pauses, draws breath, withdraws his hand, looks away. “But I know I enlisted.”

“John -”

“It doesn’t matter either way, does it? I can die here or I can die over there. It’s different for you,” he says. “You have time. You can still do things - leave something behind. I don’t have a lot of options.”

He says, “I need to accomplish something before I go.”

He says, “I need you to give me the strength to face this.”

He says, “I need you to tell me it’s okay to die.”

Alex holds him close, puts his hand over the mark on John’s chest, the pool of red between the freckles, and he says, “it’s okay to go, John, I love you, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

And he’s lying, damn him, bless him.

 

* * *

 

On the night before he goes, Alex says, “you could stay here. Live out the rest of it with me.”

“No,” John says. “I can’t ruin this place for you. I don’t want you to see it.”

“You say that like you going means I can forget you,” Alex says.

And John murmurs, “I wish we’d never met,” and Alex puts his head down and cries over the cleaving, for the first time.

 

* * *

 

(It’s not an insult - it’s the truth -)

(If they had never met, John wouldn’t be so afraid to let go.)

 

* * *

 

On Tuesday the 27th, Alex googles _assault rifle wound_  and reads the words “ The exit wound can be the size of an orange” and that’s when it really hits him -

A red bloom the size of a fist over John’s heart. A little circular mark on his back.

“They shot him in the back,” Alex says, and he tries to stop it but he imagines John terrified, breaking, running. Alex wonders if he knew. Alex wonders if he saw it coming.

John was brave, John was reckless, John was foolish.

John wasn’t given enough time. If he’d only had time.

“I need to accomplish something before I go,” John had said. He’d said plenty of other things - he’d whispered a myriad of “I love you”s, he’d whispered promises, he’d whispered reassurance.

He’d said, “I need you to tell me it’s okay to die.”

Alex hadn’t - he had never, never, never told John it was okay to die -

But he’d said, “it’s okay to go,” and he can’t help but think that maybe, if he hadn’t - if he had been born stubborn enough to refuse to say those words - John would have drawn his first breath with his mark a little less vivid.

There is the taste of salt at the back of his throat, and Alex swallows.

 

* * *

 

“Would you run?” John had asked.

His mark mocks him. Not vivid enough.

He's had enough time.

Alex looks in the mirror, examines the mark between his ribs, and whispers to the ghost of a man with a red blossom the size of an orange on his chest -

“I'd let it be.”

 


	2. let it out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's last day.

John wakes up and there’s a rivulet of red trickling under the skin from his mark, which is aching and pounding and throbbing, and he knows, with certainty, that today is the day he will die.

Breathe -

Let it out.

He fingers the mark, palpates it, finds that it hurts to touch. He savours the dull pain and imagines Alex’s lips, the lips he kissed for the last time months ago.

He considers sitting down to send an email, and then decides against it. All it would say is  _ I love you _ and Alex knows. There’s no point in reopening a wound that has been scabbing over since November. There is a letter, hidden away, addressed to Alex, and it hasn’t been touched since the day he arrived, but that makes it more real, maybe. It’s raw and painful from the cleaving. It’ll have to do.

Breathe -

Let it out.

There is not enough to do to fill the day, and that’s what’s worrisome - there’s no fighting, no gunfire, no fear, no noise. What’s the point in shipping yourself overseas to fight in a war you don’t believe in if it doesn’t even have the decency to kill you quickly?

He wonders if it will hurt. If whatever it is - and it has to be a gunshot, doesn’t it? It has to be, considering where he is - he wonders if it will take a long time, if he’ll feel it, if the seconds will slow down and all he’ll be able to do is feel his life drift away.

Fear surges in him, deep, unignorable, and he shoves it down.

Breathe -

Let it out.

Centre. Ground. List facts. 

_ Today is Tuesday the 27th of August and the weather is hot and dry, _ John thinks.  _ No chance of rain. No chance of action. _

But there’s a lie there, and he knows it - else why would his mark drip?

He finds chances to steal away during the day, tracking the rivulet. It drips steadily from just above his heart to just over his nipple, and then it stops.

And that’s when he starts to worry - because if it’s stopped, then that means -

Breathe -

Let it out.

Who would he call, if he could call home? There’s no one besides Alex, and he doesn’t know if there’s a protocol around this kind of thing. He considers showing his colonel the mark and asking permission to call home and then laughs out loud at the thought of whining like a child to his superior officer. He doesn’t want to call anyway; it would just hurt more.

He picks up the book he’s been reading, puts it back down. What does it matter if he finishes it or not? It isn’t anything important enough to spend his final few hours on.

So what is important enough?

Breathe -

Let it out.

He draws.

He draws Alex’s face, the arch of his brows and the curve of his lips, and he imagines those lips pressed against his murmuring,  _ oh, tenacious heart, _ the silky sweetness of Alex’s hot breath.

The grip of fingers on his thighs, his hips, his hair.

He runs a palm over his head, the close crop, the lack of long curls - the curls he packed away and saved in a bag in a box full of other worthless crap he marked  _ send to Alex _ and shoved under his bunk.

He picks up his paperback, scribbles  _ finish this for me and tell me how it ends _ on the inside of the front cover, takes his to his bunk, and puts it in the box.

And as he’s crossing the base to check up on the computer, to see if the wifi is up today, there’s a sudden roar of gunfire behind him.

Breathe -

Let it out.

He’s turning, and then it’s like a truck hits him in the back -

Breathe -

Let it out.

_ Oh, tenacious heart. _

Breathe -

Let it out.

 

He’s awake long enough to feel guilt that his final thought won’t be Alex.

 

Breathe -

 

Let it out.

  
  


Breathe -

  
  
  


Let it out.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Breathe -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i decided to make it worse. enjoy
> 
> self deprecating joke request for comments and kudos [here's my tumblr](http://alexangery.tumblr.com) yell at me there

**Author's Note:**

> when will i stop writing sad lams? never, probably.
> 
> please leave a comment telling me how much you hate me, or send vague messages of sorrow to me at [alexangery.tumblr.com](http://alexangery.tumblr.com)


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